Thursday, February 12, 2015

Lindsey Reviews: They Speak of Fruit

Reviewing chapbooks is often a different task than looking
at a full collection of poems, and Gary L. McDowell’s The Speak of Fruit was no exception. Just like writing a short poem
where every single word has to count and carry one, sometimes two meanings, the
same can be said for forming a chapbook. In longer poems, longer collections,
and often times in prose, there is space to slow down, let some images punch
and others just linger. There can be no lingering in good chapbooks, only a
series of punches that must land. I may only dog ear one or two pages in a full
collection of poems and still love it, but in a chapbook I find, more often
than not, that the better books have the most folded down corners. I bent up my
copy of They Speak of Fruit badly.

The second poem in the collection, “Nectar,” feels like the
actual beginning of the book, with the first, “All Stones are Broken Stones,” merely
a preface. McDowell starts out strong, demonstrating the real power of good line
breaks, writing “I found my history in the tiny,” and again later in the final
stanza

And
for that, I offer a prayer:

hummingbird,
fly in to my mouth and lay

your
head under my tongue

Let
me turn your death

against
my teeth

and
weigh it, and weigh myself.

If the reader keeps that final stanza in mind while reading
the entire collection each poem that follows becomes more meaningful. There is
power in the small, the insects, the fruit, the quiet moments in life: “weight
it, and weight myself.”

Another stand out moment in the collection is the speaker’s
question, “Where have we been and how is it we’ve never lost our way?” This
question appears “Blackbirds,” where the complex relationship between the
speaker, his father, his grandfather, a rifle and the blackbirds they hunt is
played out. A similar thought is expressed in “Yellow Jackets,” with the
speaker, who is spying on a hive of bees says, “I’ve come to see the Queen’s
chambers/[…]/so I can tell her that I am/what I seem, but the hive is
jumping/and there is not language to convince her.” This awe at the outside
world and how we are a part of it, separate from it, and all equally subjected
to it makes They Speak of Fruit an
image driven collection that puts the day to day business of life into
perspective.

Currently Reading

Currently Listening To

TNBBC Merchandise

Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.